Sunset woke slowly, blinking the blur out of her eyes and the fog out of her mind. What she saw was... nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. A few wisps of hair had fallen in front of her eyes, so Sunset knew she wasn’t blind, but her surroundings were nothing but a blank white void. Not even gravity seemed to--
Oof. Never mind, gravity existed. Sunset shook her head and rolled to her... hooves?
A quick double check revealed that her real body had been restored, cutie mark, horn, and all. Not that that wasn’t great, but -- where was the transformation of five minutes ago? Where was the Element? What had happened to her? She remembered the magic, how it had burned, how it had cradled her in fire. She remembered how easy it was to conscript her army. She remembered moving to obliterate Twilight, the last obstacle between her and Equestria, and then--
No.
Oh, no.
As if on cue, six equinoid forms walked forward out of the nothingness, resolving themselves into what must have been the proper, pony versions of those disgustingly sappy brats. Fantastic.
Sunset, almost for lack of anything else to do, tried casting a few charges of pure magic their way. To her shock, absolutely nothing happened. She felt the well of magic within her, had guided it to her horn and shaped it through focus and will, and yet--
It was as though she was still trapped in that bipedal, stunted form.
She rounded on the group, which had stopped several feet away from her. “Come to gloat, have you? What have you done to me?”
Twilight regarded her calmly. Sunset stared. Twilight’s eyes were -- they weren’t blank, or flat -- there was clearly life there -- but they were pure white, and glowing slightly. So were the eyes of each of the other five Bearers. It was unsettling, and gave the effect of vastness, like there was no difference between the ponies and the void, and the bodies were simply illusions drawn over parts of it.
“...Twilight?” Sunset tried, in a smaller voice than they had probably ever heard her use.
The thing that looked like Twilight Sparkle smiled gently. “We are not Twilight,” it said. Its voice resonated, but with what, Sunset didn’t know. It also echoed, as though multiple ponies were speaking at once.
Unwilling to venture a guess that might be wrong, Sunset waited.
Not-Twilight eventually gave in. ”Your suspicions are correct. We are the Elements of Harmony, represented by the forms of our Bearers, so that we may communicate with you on a level you understand.”
Oh, lovely. Sunset rolled her eyes. “So, what, you realized I’m not ‘magically going to be friends’” -- she adopted a nasally, mocking voice for the phrase, as though mimicking someone she didn’t like very much -- “like all your other little converts, and you’re keeping me here until I die of boredom? Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Let’s skip to the end and you can either kill me or turn me to stone or whatever right now.” Not that she thought they would, but she was trying to goad them into giving up more information.
The one that looked like Pinkie Pie giggled. “Silly! If you want more information all you have to do is ask!”
Oh no. Also, Not-Pinkie was exactly as annoying as the real one.
”We know what you’re thinking because this exchange is taking place in your mind,” Not-Twilight said, confirming Sunset’s dread. ”We are not Pinkie Pie either; our presentation to you is simply your own projected model of these ponies, in a form that feels more natural to you. We have been doing this for a very long time.”
Sunset sighed and turned around, walking away from the group for a bit before lying down, closing her eyes, and resting her head on her hooves to think. Okay, okay. So: first order of business: get out of here. She could make a more detailed plan after that. Her jailors were experienced, which meant they’d probably seen a lot of attempts before. But... wait. If this was in her own head, then it was just like she was dreaming, right? She just needed to wake up; she doubted the Harmony Brigade had enough juice in them for a double-tap. She could make her physical escape and recoup her losses later.
Falling. People woke up from dreams of falling right before they hit the ground. The only problem with that was the lack of something to fall off of... and the lack of a ground. She wasn’t about to try dying, either. Too many unknowns for that to be anything like a good idea.
“Hoo-ie!” said someone behind her. Sunset grit her teeth. “You sure are goin’ a mile a minute there. I should tell ya y’ain’t gonna get any further than a... city slicker in a... a....” Applejack, or the thing that wasn’t Applejack, trailed off. “Dang, you don’t know nothing about country aphorisms, do ya?”
Sunset smirked. “I don’t think the real Applejack knows what ‘aphorism’ means.”
Not-Applejack shrugged and lay down beside Sunset, coming into her field of view. She thought about getting up and walking further away, but Applejack would only follow her, and there were only so many times she could repeat the stunt before feeling less like a prisoner and more like a sullen foal.
“Good choice,” Applejack said casually.
“Would you stop doing that?!” Sunset snapped. “Stop rooting around in my head and responding to things I haven’t said out loud!”
“Why should I?” Applejack said. “You weren’t thinkin’ like that when you started controlling all those kids’ minds. I reckon they didn’t want you in their heads, neither.”
“So what!? You’re telling me I should care what those little morons think? Why? If you want to be treated as an equal, you have to prove you’re worthy of it. Nobody who can be manipulated that easily deserves to have an opinion about it.”
Applejack frowned. “That’s horseapples and you know it.”
Sunset suppressed a scream of frustration and stood quickly, needing some kind of outlet. Not-Applejack stood with her and put a hoof on her shoulder. “I don’t think--”
Sunset reared and kicked her in the face.
Or, she tried to. Applejack neatly retreated the exact amount of distance she needed to avoid the blow, not fazed in the slightest. “All right, then,” she said. “Ah won’t touch ya.”
Sunset did growl, almost past caring that this was ridiculous. She wouldn’t let herself be bridled and led by the bit wherever the hell these trinkets wanted her to go. She’d spent years trying to get out from under Celestia’s golden hooves.
“Butcha didn’t, did ya?” Applejack pointed out. “If you really wanted to get away from your teacher, you wouldn’t have spent so much time thinkin’ about her. If Celestia really mattered as little to you as you want her to, you wouldn’t flinch every time the principal walks in the room.”
“Shut up!” Sunset snapped. “What do you know?!”
“The truth,” Applejack said steadily. “An’ you know it, too, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You never stopped caring what Celestia thinks. How did you even think your little invasion was gonna go, huh?”
“It was going fine until Little Miss Sparkle showed up,” Sunset said. “If you hadn’t trapped me here--”
“She controls the sun!” Applejack interrupted her. “The only thing that woulda stopped her from crushin’ you is that she knows you!”
Sunset recoiled, and covered it with bitterness. “She used to know me.”
“But you ain’t grown up an inch. You’re still the same little pony you were back then, still looking for validation from someone who ain’t gonna give it to you, you just got a couple more layers of grime on top. You spent four years here without your magic and what did you learn? Nothing!”
“Well, what was I supposed to learn?!” Sunset roared back. “How to be friends with weaklings and, and losers?! How to be happy being someone else’s cast-off? I spent all my life trying to impress the Princess and as soon as I started to find real power she took it away from me! All because she couldn’t handle not being in control of everything!”
“That was dark magic you were messing with, Sunny, and you know it,” Applejack said. “It woulda eaten you up from the inside out and left nothing but a husk, just like it did to Luna. You thought you could control it but it would’ve ended up controllin’ you, sure as the sun rises.”
“No. You’re wrong. I knew what I was doing. And don’t call me that.”
“It don’t matter knowing how hot the fire is if it’s already burnin’ ya. Better ponies than you got turned to ash. Celestia didn't want it to happen to you and you couldn't take her knowing more than you about it.”
Sunset made a disgusted noise. “Your accent's slipping. This is useless. All you want is for me to admit that I’m the villain here, everything is my fault, and nothing I do can ever make up for it.” She turned away, about to start walking in a random direction. She didn’t want to listen to this tripe anymore.
“No. She was wrong.”
Sunset kept walking. Whatever gambit the Elements were trying on her, she wasn't going to let it work. She looked over her shoulder and was satisfied to see Applejack's form growing smaller with distance. Maybe that would be the end of the whole charade.
Pfft. She was wrong. How dumb did they think she was? The Elements were Celestia's; they'd never gainsay her to any significant degree. Sunset shoved the entire train of thought to the side and started brainstorming a way out.
Except... it wouldn't stay shoved. What use was admitting Celestia's fault, to the Elements? To lure her into a false sense of security? What would be the point of that? They had demonstrated, very clearly, that they didn't need to trick or surprise Sunset Shimmer in order to defeat her and do whatever they wanted with her. A wave didn't need to sneak up on a candle.
She was wrong. Well, of course she was. Of course. Sunset knew that, but how and why would the Elements know? No, this was getting her nowhere. Wasting time with confusing nonsense was exactly what they wanted her to do. If it was her mind, could she maybe conjure something to fall off of? Would it work if she was aware of the fall? Was this even like lucid dreaming at all? Ugh. Too many variables.
Which Element was Applejack supposed to be, anyway? The Element of Farming? Apples? The girl's entire life revolved around the fruit as far as Sunset could tell, why not throw in an ancient Equestrian magical artifact. No, that was silly and she knew it. What were the Elements again? Magic, Loyalty, Laughter, uh... Honesty... Niceness? Charity? Something along those lines, anyway.
"The truth." When Sunset had asked, rhetorically, what Applejack knew, that's what she'd said. The truth. That nailed her pretty solidly as Honesty. On the other hoof, that didn't make any sense. She'd obviously lied, or at least misrepresented herself, when she'd told Sunset Celestia had been wrong. Not that she hadn't been, but presumably the Elements didn't think so. Was Sunset an acceptable target for lying, either because she was in opposition to them or for some other reason? That didn't fit with what (admittedly little) she knew about the Elements. You couldn't pick and choose, with them. They weren't smart, they didn't understand nuances. It was all or nothing.
...At least, she thought so. That was how it had felt when she'd put on the tiara. Twilight Sparkle might have been an alicorn, but Sunset was on level with her, magically; otherwise she would have failed miserably at turning the Element to her will. A lot more would have had to have gone wrong for Honesty to be lying to her.
Maybe she had the Element wrong. Nothing said Laughter couldn't lie, however poor a fit that was for Applejack in particular. That was the simplest explanation.
The simplest, but she couldn't convince herself of it.
No. She was getting off track again. She had to keep reminding herself, it was a trick, it was all a setup for them to gloat about their victory and humiliate her so thoroughly she wouldn't try again. She couldn't let them get their hooks in her brain. She was smarter than that.
Sunset stopped walking and scowled at nothing in particular. She looked back. Applejack was exactly as far away as she'd been the last time Sunset had looked.
She was wrong.
Dammit. Glaring, Sunset turned around and trudged back to Applejack, who didn't even have the good grace to look smug about it. “What.”
“She was wrong,” Applejack repeated, like Sunset hadn't just spent a solid ten minutes trying to ditch her. “Least how I reckon. You weren’t tryna take over, or hurt nopony. You just wanted to show her how much you knew, prove that you were ready for somethin’ bigger. Ain’t necessarily your fault the path you picked has a... high turnover rate, so to speak.”
“She’s Celestia. She’s the Princess of Equestria. She isn’t wrong.” Sunset didn’t dare let her glare drop. She swung around again, this time to save herself from embarrassment if her mask slipped.
“She’s a pony.” Applejack’s voice was heartbreakingly soft. No, not Applejack. This thing wasn’t Applejack, it was just using her face and voice to manipulate Sunset. She had to remember that. “She makes mistakes sometimes, same as anypony else. Or are you gonna tell me she was right to leave you here?”
“No, but--” Sunset’s mind was whirling. Somehow, very suddenly, the conversation had gotten away from her, and she was helpless to do anything but be carried along in its wake. “Of course she was wrong, she just wasn’t -- she didn’t--” She was looking down, but her hooves were getting blurry. Was something wrong with her vision? “She moves the sun and moon! She’s supposed to be just, and fair, and k-kind, and all of that! I trusted her!”
Honesty didn’t say anything.
Sunset’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Why would she abandon me if I didn’t deserve to be abandoned?”
A soft sigh. “Oh, sugarcube.” Sunset heard the click of hooves and felt Honesty’s presence along her side. For a second she though the Element would try to touch her, and flinched, but the contact never came. Just a quiet companionship, from the truth she hadn’t known how to face. “I don’t know, hon. I think you’re gonna have to ask her that yourself, someday.”
Sunset squeezed her eyes shut, ignoring the few tears that fell onto the nothingness beneath her. “Fat chance of that,” she said. “Since I’m never getting out of here.”
No response. When she looked around, Honesty was gone. Sunset was alone again.
Was that it? Did the Elements just want to interrogate her and play with her insecurities? What was even the point of that? Did they want her to admit she’d made mistakes? Honesty was right; even when she’d first started channelling that dark magic, she’d felt its corrosion. She’d just been so caught up in her need to prove herself that it hadn’t mattered. And then, as she kept using it, it mattered less and less. Only power remained.
“Hi!”
“Gah!” Sunset yelped. Instinctively, she tried to blast whatever had surprised her, but of course nothing happened. She had to settle for glaring at Not-Pinkie while she tried to calm her galloping heart.
“You look like you need some cheering up!” Pinkie chirped.
Like Path Love’s dogs hearing a bell, Sunset’s mood immediately plummeted. She so did not need this right now. This version of Pinkie Pie was somehow even creepier than normal.
Not-Pinkie cocked her head to the side. “How come you have such a problem with Pinkie?” she wondered. “She’s so much fun!”
Sunset rolled her eyes. Here they went. “Because she won’t go away,” she growled.
“Silly!” Not-Pinkie giggled. “Of course I’m not gonna take the hint! I’m, like, the Princess of Not Taking Hints! Ooh, do you think they give out wings for that?” She twisted to see her own back, as though she would sprout them then and there.
“Yeah, I think I see some over there,” Sunset deadpanned, pointing into the distance.
“Wow, really?!” The Pinkie-puppet bounced away and abruptly disappeared. Sunset heaved a sigh. Good riddance.
She turned around and immediately came snout-to-snout with another Pinkie Pie. “Ack!”
“I didn’t see any wings,” Not-Pinkie said cheerfully. “But I found these!” She held up a bouquet.
Sunset barely kept from tripping over her own hooves in her haste to stumble backwards. Once she had her footing, she brought one hoof up to massage her temple. “How did you even -- no, never mind, I don’t want to know."
“How I got behind you or how I found a bouquet?”
“Either.” Was this her punishment? No one deserved this. What was the advice? Ignore them and they'll stop bothering you? Yeah, right, like that ever worked. Then again, Pinkie had the attention span of a housefly. If Sunset just didn't give her anything to work with, maybe she'd go away.
"I won't go away," Pinkie said, still affable. Sunset inhaled, exhaled, stared straight ahead, and didn't respond. "Well, that's not very friendly. I guess I'll have to hold up the conversation all by myself! Don't worry, even your version of Pinkie can talk for hours. She might even have more energy than the real Pinkie! What should I talk about?" She paused for Sunset's response, which the latter didn't provide. "Man, I bet you're fun at parties. Oh, that reminds me! Okay, so this one time I was putting together a silent auction for--"
"Fine," Sunset snapped. She was pretty sure she knew the rest of the story. "What do you even want?"
"I want to talk to you!" Pinkie said promptly.
Sunset tried not to just hit Pinkie in the face. It wouldn't work anyway. "I know that, idiot," she said, very slowly, as though speaking to an oblivious small child. "What else do you want? How do I make you leave me alone?"
Pinkie frowned like she was actually hurt. "'Idiot' isn't a very nice thing to call somepony."
"Yes," Sunset ground out. "That is the point."
“How come you’re such a frowny-pants?” Pinkie wanted to know.
“I’m not,” Sunset said, giving up on ever getting rid of the walking, talking headache. “I just had work to do.”
“You are,” Pinkie insisted. “When’s the last time you laughed? No, really laughed,” she said, before Sunset could do more than open her mouth. “Not because someone else got hurt, or because one of your plans was working out, or because you were pretending to. When’s the last time you laughed just because you were happy?”
A long silence stretched between them. Sunset had had an answer ready -- the last time she'd laughed was just before the Elements had trapped her here, or during her conversation with Honesty, depending on how you counted it -- but the first had been a simple release of tension, the latter for effect. She was unpleasantly surprised to discover she actually couldn't remember the last time she'd just... had fun. Smiled. Laughed.
She sneered to cover the lapse. It felt too fragile. "Who cares?”
“I care,” Pinkie said, as if that were enough.
“Why?” Sunset blurted out, frustrated. “You don’t even like me! Or the real Pinkie doesn’t, anyway.”
“She doesn’t? How do you know?”
“Because no one likes me,” Sunset said flatly. She swallowed when she realized what she’d said, but she didn’t back down. It was true.
“What about Snips and Snails?”
“Those two don’t like me, they like my breasts and my attention. If I hadn’t gotten them Trixie probably would have scooped them up and they wouldn’t even act any different. Their combined IQ is lower than the ambient temperature.”
Pinkie looked genuinely curious. “Then why do you hang out with them?”
Sunset couldn’t believe she had to explain this. “I don’t. I use them to get what I want because they’re stupidly easy to manipulate. Most horny teenage boys are. They’re tools, not friends. If I actually made friends with them my reputation would tank so fast Granny Smith’s head would spin.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that anymore,” Pinkie said. Her tone was so casual Sunset actually did a double-take when she processed the words. “What’s wrong with making friends?”
Sunset felt the urge to hit her head on something, but there was nothing else around besides Pinkie. “Nothing, as long as you don’t slip up. Allies make you strong. Friends make you weak.”
Pinkie tapped one hoof on her chin, thinking. “But you’re in here, and Twilight and her friends are out there. You lost. If friends make you weak, shouldn’t you have won?”
“I did win,” Sunset said through gritted teeth. “You were there. I got what I wanted and Twinkletoes couldn’t do anything about it. I’m only here because they pulled the Elements out of thin air in some deus ex machina bull--”
“Sure, you won for a minute or two.” Pinkie shrugged. “But it was you who wanted to play for keeps. You don’t get to change your mind now that it didn’t work out. If you’d had friends, you could have won Homecoming Queen in the first place and Twilight wouldn’t have ever been a problem.”
Sunset glared. “Is that what you want? To gloat?”
“No,” Pinkie said. “I want to know why you won’t let yourself be happy.”
“Because the world is cruel!” Sunset yelled. “Because life is harsh and you have to protect yourself from getting hurt! Because no one else will do that for you! All friends are are people who want to take advantage of you, and you’re just supposed to let them! You can’t just stick your head in the sand and ignore the bad things that happen just because you want to be happy! It doesn’t work like that!”
Laughter fixed her with a sad, sympathetic look. “Did you see what Twilight Sparkle’s friends did, right before they called on the Elements?”
Sunset blinked, thrown off at the apparent subject change. “What?”
“When you tried to hurt Twilight. None of them knew the Elements even existed. They could have died, but they threw themselves between her and your fireball, because they’re her friends.”
Sunset screwed her eyes shut and shook her head, almost involuntarily. “No,” she said. “No, no.”
“They protected her,” Laughter continued relentlessly. “Twilight Sparkle is alive because she has friends. You're here because you don’t.”
“Twilight has friends because she’s special!” Sunset shouted. “Twilight has friends she can rely on, Twilight has friends that even magic says will be there for her, Twilight’s friends will never betray her or give up on her! Twilight is foalish and naive and she gets to be because she’s a good pony! And I’m not!”
Silence. Sunset was panting, breathing ragged.
“I’m sorry you think that,” Laughter said. “I think you could be, if you let yourself.”
When Sunset opened her eyes, the second Element was gone.
Sunset sat down heavily. Did she really think she wasn’t a good person? Well, why not? That was what everyone else thought, wasn’t it? Good people didn’t turn friend groups against each other for the sake of getting to the top. Good people didn’t do a lot of things that Sunset had done.
“Sup,” said a voice from behind her.
Sunset turned, and saw Rainbow Dash. “Ugh. What do you want?” she said, too drained to try for anything more subtle than that.
Not-Rainbow shrugged. “Just to talk. How you holding up?”
“Seriously?” Sunset asked her.
“Yeah, why not?”
“Can’t you just ask the other... parts of yourself?”
The Rainbow thing shrugged again. “Yeah, but that sounded pretty intense, to be honest.”
“You’re not Honesty, I already met her,” Sunset grumbled. She turned away from Rainbow and laid down fully. “Can you just... give me a minute?”
“Sure.”
Vaguely surprised that the Element wasn’t going to keep hounding her, Sunset rested her head on her hooves and just breathed. She felt like she’d been scraped raw, like she’d had three legs knocked out from under her and was wobbling dangerously on the fourth.
“What’s the point of this?” she asked. “Not -- I don’t mean what does Rainbow Dash think is the point of this, I mean, without pretending to be a pony, what do you want from me?”
“Harmony,” Not-Rainbow said. “Internal and external. We want an end to pain. We want honesty, laughter, loyalty, generosity, and kindness to bloom in the garden of hearts. We want to remedy the imbalance we sense in you, that has made you a threat to others.”
Sunset picked her head up. “Can’t I just promise I’ll be good and you can let me go?”
“No.”
“Yeah, I figured.” She lapsed into silence, and the Element-gestalt let her. After a minute she said, “Can you just tell me the lesson you want me to learn here and get it over with?”
“Not really,” the thing said, in Rainbow’s voice again.
“Let me guess, it doesn’t work like that?”
“Kinda. That and it’s hard to learn about loyalty if you don’t have anything to be loyal to.”
Sunset flinched. “Well, then, great, go away.”
“I said it was hard, I didn’t say you had nothing to learn. Why’d you betray Celestia?”
Sunset lurched upright and spun to face Not-Rainbow, gaping. “Wha--?! Why did I -- if anything she betrayed me!”
“Yeah, and she saved her country and millions of lives when she did. What’d you do it for? A crown?”
“I didn’t betray her,” Sunset snarled. “Just because she wanted to forbid me from learning after she told me I should learn as much as I could--”
“You made a promise and you broke it,” Rainbow said bluntly. “Sounds like betrayal to me.”
“Okay, no, that’s ridiculous.” Sunset scoffed. “What, every time someone flakes out on taking care of their buddy’s pet fish or whatever it’s a betrayal?”
“You meant it,” Rainbow continued, undeterred. “You promised her you wouldn’t keep studying out of that book without her and you looked into her eyes and you meant it. And then you did it anyway.”
“Not right away,” Sunset argued. “Only once I figured out she was holding me back.”
“Yeah? She’s three thousand years old. You think she’d just deny you something you wanted for no reason?”
“Honesty said she was wrong.”
“And you said it yourself: I’m not Honesty. I don’t care if she was wrong. I’m not talking to her. I’m talking to you. And you’ve got this little ball of resentment right in the middle of you that justifies everything you do, no matter what it is, because even if nobody’s betrayed you yet it’s only a matter of time, right? And as long as you keep holding on to that little ball it’s just gonna get bigger and bigger until one day it chokes you to death.”
“So what do you want me to do about it?” Sunset snapped. “La dee da, pull the wool back over my eyes? Everyone looks out for themselves. I’m no different.”
“But you don’t, do you?” Rainbow said. “You sabotage yourself. You make terrible plans. Why not just steal the crown outright? Why bother with the homecoming nonsense? Literally cutting and pasting pictures to frame Twilight? That’s stupid. Vice Principal Luna only believed it because she knew something was up with the new student and she was willing to overlook the source of the information to find out what it was. You’re smart, Sunset, this kind of thing should be way below your level.”
“I... I....”
“That’s your problem, isn’t it? You’re not even loyal to yourself.”
Sunset reared back as though she’d been slapped. “Excuse me?!”
“That’s why you can’t get your act together. That’s why everything you try to build up falls apart as soon as you let go. There’s a little part of you that knows what you’re doing is wrong, and it hates you for it. And so you just get stuck in a tug-of-war between that ball of resentment and your withered little conscience and nothing you do ever turns out right.”
“What does this have to do with loyalty?” Sunset snapped, exasperated.
“What do you think?” Rainbow fired back. “Rainbow Dash is barely a person in your head and she's still smarter than you! She knows you can't build a house during the day if you spend all night pulling it down. You can have the resentment, or you can have the conscience, but you gotta pick one and stick with it! You can’t be bitter and selfish and powerful if you regret what you did to get there!”
Sunset just stared, then dropped her gaze. There was a door in the back of her mind, and a revelation was beating it down. Or maybe there were two paths in front of her, and she could decide which one to take, or some other metaphor. She saw, clearly, what Loyalty meant, how she’d been deceiving herself into thinking her own actions wouldn’t affect her. That she could get her revenge on Celestia and be perfectly happy afterwards. But it didn’t work like that, did it? She couldn’t keep on harboring reservations one way or the other. And that resentment... that was a dark, lonely choice.
She shivered and looked around. As she’d suspected, Loyalty had vanished at her moment of realization. So who was next? Twilight, Rarity, or Fluttershy? She kind of hoped it would be Fluttershy. She could use a break.
But it was Rarity who trotted up to her. “Oh, there you are, darling,” she said, like they’d gotten separated in the mall or something. “I have been looking forward to speaking with you.”
“Of course you have,” Sunset said. “Let me guess, I need to be either kinder or more giving. Something something charity something something what goes around comes around ‘tis better to give than to receive blah blah blah.”
“Oh, well, save some of the proselytizing for me, dear,” Rarity said, pretending offense.
Sunset snorted, and was a little startled to realize that it was because she’d found Rarity’s performance funny, rather than as an expression of contempt. While she was blinking over that concept, Rarity said, “I’d imagine you’re getting rather tired of all this....” She looked around. “This bland white nonsense. Why don’t I add in some variation?” And there were two sofas in front of them, sitting facing each other across an elegant coffee table.
Rarity climbed onto one, and, not knowing what else to do, Sunset awkwardly took the other. This was... different. She wondered what Rarity wanted out of her.
“Oh, nothing, really, just a chance to talk more comfortably than we would have been standing.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Nice try. You’re obviously trying to butter me up.”
Rarity looked almost disturbed. “Not at all. Can’t a pony be nice without any ulterior motives?”
“No,” Sunset said flatly. “And you do have ulterior motives.”
“Well, I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that detail. But the sentiment still holds. I simply enjoy making others’ lives more pleasant.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “Let’s skip the crap. My guess is you're Generosity. If you gave away everything you had you’d be screwed.”
“Who says I have to give away everything?”
“Isn’t that what generosity is? Giving other people the coat off your back in the middle of winter?”
“It can be, but only as long as you can get yourself another coat. You must take care of yourself, too.”
Sunset snorted, and this time it wasn’t in mirth. “Never thought I’d hear the Element of Generosity telling me to be selfish. I thought that was what got me into this mess.”
Rarity cocked her head, reminding Sunset strongly of Pinkie for a moment. “Why do you think that taking care of yourself must entail selfishness?” she said.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Indulge me, if you would.”
If Sunset kept rolling her eyes like this they were going to get stuck in the back of her head. “Because it’s my self. That’s what selfishness is. It’s even in the word. Besides, I don’t want to be indebted to you. I know ‘no strings attached’ is a lie. Everyone always wants something. Or are you here to convince me employers pay their workers money out of the goodness of their hearts?”
Rarity set her teacup back in its saucer. Sunset didn’t know where she’d gotten either. “No, of course not. Employers pay their employees because they’ve both agreed to an exchange of labor for goods, or in this case currency. I’m not talking about contracts, I’m talking about gifts. Hasn’t anyone ever gotten you anything for Hearth’s Warming?”
“Yeah, but that’s a tradition,” Sunset pointed out. “Everyone expects you to do that, and you have to get gifts for a bunch of other people too. It all comes out even.”
“Hmm,” Rarity said. “Did you know that if you ask someone to do you a favor, and they do it, they’re more inclined to like you?”
“I -- what?”
“It’s because they don’t think of themselves as the kind of person who would help out someone they disliked. And since they’ve already helped you, well then, that side of the equation can’t be changed, so what else is there to do but think of you more favorably?”
Sunset shook her head. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“And yet it’s true. Doing ten favors for someone else won’t endear you nearly as much to them as getting them to do one favor for you. Being generous makes you think of yourself as a good person, far more than being given a gift makes you think highly of someone else.” Rarity paused. “Of course, if you take advantage of their generosity over and over, and never repay it, eventually they’ll sour on the idea. So it only works a few times before you have to start holding up your end of the bargain.”
“Yeah, and then you’re stuck,” Sunset said. “That’s exactly what I don’t want.”
“Why not?”
“How are you this boneheaded? I don’t want to owe anyone anything. That’s the only way I can control what I do and how I do it.”
“What about the opportunities you miss, then?”
Sunset knew she was walking right into a trap, but she couldn’t not ask. “What do you mean?”
“Would you ever have become Celestia’s student if not for her generosity? Would you ever have been in a position to steal the crown if not for the generosity of the school here?”
“So basically what you’re saying is that I shouldn’t be afraid to play other people for suckers.”
Rarity pursed her lips. “Your reluctance to do so may be what saves you, in the end. Your former enemies will give you a second chance. They may not be so willing to give you a fourth or fifth. Accepting generosity means nothing if you don’t return it.”
“Why should I?”
“Well, you said it yourself, didn’t you? Nobody likes you. You’re rude, petty, spiteful, selfish, and downright mean-spirited. Aren’t you lonely?”
Sunset bit her lip and looked down. “...Yes,” she admitted.
“Generosity doesn’t mean exhausting yourself to raise others up. It means giving what you can, when you can, and trusting that others will help you in turn. I’ll give you that one for free.” Sunset glanced up, startled, and Rarity winked.
She looked back down at her hooves. “But that’s hard,” she found herself saying. “It’s safe being alone.”
“It is. It’s scary, when you rely on people other than yourself. You have to trust that they’ll repay your generosity.”
“What if they don’t?” Sunset said, barely moving her lips.
“Then you lose trust in them. And that’s a hard thing to do, but it won’t be the end of the world. You’ll have others to pick up the slack; they’ll notice, and they won’t let you fall into the dark.”
“But I have to let them in first,” Sunset murmured. Her hooves were getting blurry again. She shut her eyes and laid her head down on top of her forelegs, knowing that Generosity was no longer sitting next to her. That left Kindness.
Instead of hearing someone, Sunset felt a hoof gently stroking the top of her head. She curled into herself and cried. She'd been right to begin with, in a way. The Elements wanted her here to make sure their victory was certain. She'd expected them to belittle her, to mock her, to present her with irrefutable evidence of her flaws, and they had. She just hadn't expected them to be right.
No, that wasn't true. They were in her mind. There was no guesswork where the Elements were concerned. What she hadn't expected was that they would pretend to care.
"I'm not pretending," Kindness said softly. Sunset flinched away, then couldn't stop herself from moving back, seeking comfort. She hadn't been held like this since... since she'd run. No, longer. Since she'd started lying to Celestia. It was all her fault, wasn't it? Everything that had happened, she'd brought down on herself, and the rubble of her life had pushed her past any gentler breaking point. Now she was faced with a stark choice: either she could own up to what she'd done, stop pretending that other people didn't matter, and try to salvage what was left, or she could die. Whether or not the Elements would kill her was immaterial. If she refused to let herself grow and change, she'd die just as surely as if they had.
She knew, without having to be told, that this was what would determine her freedom. The other lessons -- she’d needed them, but they hadn’t been vital, not like this one was. They wouldn’t have broken her, if she’d failed to understand.
Because, as Sunset was slowly realizing, like gleaming metal emerging from under rust, she was going to have to do this again. And again, and again, and again, until she didn’t need to be reminded that what she’d learned was wrong, until friendship and its virtues came as easy as breathing. And it would be hard, and there would be times she wanted to quit, to throw it all away and go back to this simple, bleak life where she trusted no one and no one trusted her.
And every time, she was going to have to make this choice. Again, and again, and again. And it would be just as hard as it was now, the first few times, but there was a future where it practically wasn’t a choice at all. Sunset wanted that future so badly it felt like it was tearing a hole in her heart.
“Yes,” she said, to Kindness, to the Elements, to the question she didn’t know she was being asked. “Yes. Please, yes.”
There was a sensation like someone kissing her forehead, right where her horn should have been, and this time when Sunset opened her eyes she saw dirt and the ruins of pavement around her, and above her the people she’d mistreated, gazes cold.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, pled, begged. “I’m so sorry.” She looked, and there was one face still smiling at her, patient, forgiving. Twilight Sparkle held out her hand.
Sunset reached out, and let Friendship lift her up.
